Lynn Tilton, the diva of distressed lending, is facing some distress of her own.

The 55-year-old financier and her Patriarch Partners private-equity firm were accused on Monday of defrauding investors by hiding the poor performance of its investments — moves that helped the firm rake in nearly $200 million in undeserved fees, according to the suit filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Tilton, who calls herself the “Turnaround Queen” for her success at rehabilitating distressed companies, denies the charges.

The flamboyant financier, one of the wealthiest self-made women in the US, raised $2.5 billion for Patriarch’s three Zohar funds — which hold collateralized loan obligations, or CLOs, comprising of issued notes of distressed corporate loans.

Zohar’s strategy was to return its portfolio companies to health, pay off their debt and then sell them for a profit, the SEC said in a 13-page order.

But even though the loans quit paying interest — some for several years — Tilton refused to mark them down, as required by the deal documents, the SEC said.

As a result, Tilton and the funds were able to receive about $200 million more in management fees and other payments, the SEC alleged.

“Tilton violated her fiduciary duty to her clients when she exercised subjective discretion over valuation levels, creating a major conflict of interest that was never disclosed to them,” said Andrew Ceresney, director of the SEC’s Enforcement Division.

Tilton, a Bronx native who received a tennis scholarship to Yale, worked at Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs before starting her own firm 15 years ago.

Her success story resulted in an appearance on “Secret Lives of the Super Rich” and her own reality show, “The Diva of Distressed.”

While her heavy eye makeup, skin-tight costumes and stiletto heels are enough to set her apart from other Wall Street investors, Tilton’s commutes to Manhattan via chopper from her home in Rumson, NJ, certainly add to her stand-out persona.

“We are disappointed that the SEC has chosen to bring an enforcement action that is ill-founded and at odds with Patriarch’s investment strategy, which was consistently disclosed since the inception of the funds,” a spokeswoman for the firm said in a statement.

“Since its founding in 2000, Patriarch has successfully restructured numerous businesses and has saved hundreds of thousands of jobs,” the spokeswoman added.